What is the amp for magnepan's: tube or solid?

If you can find a proper tube amplifier, word up is that is a much better way to go. Magnaplanars can reveal quite a bit that you may not want to hear from a transistor amplifier. Although usual word is that you need a 'high current' amp for these speakers, it turns out that this is really not the case. They are fairly easy to drive and in a lot of cases 80 watts is plenty on the speaker *if the amp is happy with the load*.

This of course has been the 'traditional' issue with tubes on Magnaplanars. However you might check out zeroimpedance.com, as the ZERO has provided an elegant (and reasonable)solution to this difficulty. The result is you can have the delicacy of tubes with authority and punch at the same time.

Wolcotts. Tireguy is giving you insufficient information about the JC-1s. They're not the best; they're good, and that's where it starts and ends. They lack the articulation and refinement of the Wolcotts and bass control of some other more expensive solid-state amps. In short, they're overrated, which is to say they perform at their price point and no more.

Gladstone why don't you have Wolcotts then? So then what amp under 12k do you say would outperform them? Stop trying to stir up turmoil(lord knows you love to :^)- you know they're REAL good for the money, you even said so here. In fact you thought they were better then your Classé until I purchased a pair on YOUR recommendation and then all of the sudden the Omega is better- come on I'm not going to play THIS game every time I have to reply to your trolling.

Tubes may be better, however I am not willing to deal with tubes, my life is to hectic to add tube rolling, tube replacement and amp warm up into the picture(sometimes I only have 15 minutes to listen!). In my real world enviroment tubes don't make sense- I should have mentioned that in my first post.

I just upgraded my amp to a used Levinson 334 and it sounds great especially with a tubed pre-amp (ARC LS15). Check the review of the Levinson 334 in Stereophile (Sept '99). They can be had for as little as $2500. As for the power (125 wpc) they provide all I need even on my Maggie 3.6s. I've heard good things about Bryston's and Maggies (my brother recently bought a 4bst to go with his 1.6s but have not heard them - he's in Boulder, I'm in San Diego).

I recently heard the 3.5 with the Rowland Concentra II and they sounded marvelous. We also listened to the EAR 509 100wpc tube amps which were not quite as tight in the bass but very similar in many ways. The maggies need at least 100wpc to come alive. They have also sounded good with the Bryston 4BST, ARC D300 ss amp and Sonic Frontiers SFS80, but the latter at 60wpc was too polite in the bass. Jallen